Death, sex and money are three things best left out of polite conversations, which is exactly why Anna Sale decided to focus her podcast on them. “It was just sort of a hunch that I would want to listen to a show like this,” said Sale. Turns out it’s a show that a lot of other people want to listen to, as well.
Why you should listen:
“I was a traditional public radio news reporter, covering politics and breaking news,” explained Sale, but when WNYC – the public radio station where Sale worked (and, in full disclosure, I freelanced) – had a contest inviting employees to submit an idea for a new show, Sale found herself thinking about what she really wanted to spend her time doing. She ended up pitching a podcast focused on death, sex and money, three things we all encounter and we all have to deal with. “I think it was a reaction to the artifice of politics,” said Sale. “Where you’re talking about things without really talking about them specifically, concretely or honestly.”
Sale’s podcast lives up that billing: there’s a conversation with W Kamau Bell about life after cancellation of his TV show, and a cop who entered public service only to find himself making money by stealing from crime scenes, taking payoffs from drug dealers and selling cocaine. The episodes make for compelling listens and offer fascinating peeks into lives most of us never lead, and for Sale, telling these stories has been liberating. “I had no idea what I was doing when I started the show, but moving into a place with creative freedom and the lack of constraints has been exciting, thrilling and terrifying all at once,” said Sale.
The show started in 2014 with a conversation with singer Bill Withers about the open-ended topic of how to be a man. From there the show has covered real estate, relationships and everything in between, with a nuanced touch and incisive reporting. “It really came down to having a show that goes right at the things that shape our lives and that we have the most difficulty navigating – that I was having the most difficulty navigating,” said Sale, which speaks to part of the allure of her podcast, in that she does not shy away from the personal. One of the earliest episodes, This Senator Saved My Love Life, featured the unlikely relationship between Arthur (Sale’s then-boyfriend, now-fiancé) and Wyoming senator Alan Simpson. Arthur had sent a plea to the Senator for help in his relationship with Sale as they struggled trying to make a long-distance relationship work. For reasons explained in the podcast, Arthur thought the intervention of a US senator and his wife could help turn the relationship around – and he was right. “I think starting the show with an admission that I didn’t know what I was doing either created a bit of a safe space,” said Sale with a laugh. “That’s just continued to grow. Listeners hear each other, they hear famous people, they hear people come to the show and admit vulnerability and it reinforces the idea that Death, Sex and Money is a place where you don’t have to have all the answers.”
Perhaps because of Sale’s personal revelations, listeners feel they can open up to her, both on the air and in her inbox, and this intimacy with her listeners is what Sale considers to be the best part of the job. “It’s incredible,” said Sale. “It’s a privilege, it’s really touching to me.”
The close-knit relationship between host and listeners also helps inspire topics for the show. “Pretty soon after we started doing the show, I started getting very personal emails from people talking about what they were struggling with,” said Sale. “Cheating and infidelity immediately rose up and we put out a call for stories and stitched them together into an episode.” The result was Cheating Happens, a fascinating foray into the lives of cheaters and those they cheated on. In the wake of the hack into the Ashley Madison website, which made infidelity easy for its 37m users, it’s an intriguing and topical look into the mindset of a cheater.
As to what subjects she decides to cover, Sale describes it as an organic process taking into account current events, listener suggestions and interesting conversations. “Sometimes it’s coming across someone talking about something and thinking there’s more to the story. That’s how the episode with Jason Isbell came about,” she said. Isbell was the lead singer of Drive-By Truckers who publicly got sober, released a critically acclaimed and personal solo album, and got married within the space of a few years, a career arc that piqued Sale’s interest. “I wondered: What is their life like now – two years sober, married for a year, he’s had a huge break-out success? So I talked to him and his wife together about how their lives had changed,” said Sale about the conversation that became the episode Confessions of a Nashville Power Couple.
Sale has a knack for storytelling, but she has an almost uncanny ability for getting people to open up to her – a skill that she humbly shrugs off. “I just try to really listen to what the person is saying,” said Sale. “I think giving people space to articulate and put words to something they’ve been going through can be a really empowering experience. I want to create a place where people know that there’s no shame in not having the answers.”
Because people entrust Sale with some of their most intimate stories, she is very determined to live up to that trust. “We take the ethics of dealing with the stories of peoples lives very seriously,” she said; to that end, the show frequently changes names and debates consequences of making stories public well before stories ever reach the air. “So far the show has been a safe space and I feel fiercely protective of that,” said Sale.
As the show continues in its second year, Sale has become more comfortable with the calculus of podcasting: figuring out what order to release the episodes, giving herself plenty of time to fully report the topics, and deciding which stories to cover – and there are a lot of stories to cover. As Sale said: “One of the best parts about having a show called Death, Sex and Money is that you’re never going to run out of content.” And that means never running out of new shows to listen to.
Where to start: This Senator Saved My Love Life, Cheating Happens, The NFL Made Me Rich, I Won’t Watch It Now
Subscribe to Death, Sex, and Money on iTunes
